Hanoi Again

The night train back to Hanoi was not quite as nice as the original Hanoi-Lao Cai/Sapa leg. There must have been something wrong with our train car, because it kept making ridiculously loud noises. We were so tired that we eventually passed out anyways, and woke up in Hanoi around 5 AM the next day. We took a cab to a hostel that Guider and Jonas had looked up on Wikitravel/Hostelworld and checked in. We got one big room for four people with A/C.

After checking in, we started our day off with the customary 6 AM bowl of Pho Bo, and set about our adventures for the day. We got our hands on a map and just wandered around the city all day. Hanoi is a very busy place with almost 7 million people and a whopping 4 million motorbikes (rush hour traffic here must be one of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen). The Old Quarter (where we stayed) is filled with lots of markets selling clothes, handbags, and trinkets, and the streets are lined with street vendors selling food and fresh produce.

Pete bought a SIM-card for the phone he brought (I think he bought it in Spain 2 summers ago) and Jonas bought a cell phone and a SIM-card for the amazing price of $32. Pete has since lost his phone, sorry mom!

We had all decided that we wanted to eat dog in Hanoi (northern Vietnam is famous for its dog restaurants, especially Hanoi). After a long day of walking around the city in the extreme heat/humidity in search of a nice plate of "man's best friend" without much result, we decided it was time for a little bit of relaxation (we decided that we did not have enough time and/or money to eat both dog and snake, Vietnam's two most expensive dishes, in one day, so we decided to prioritize snake, which we will get to later...)

Hanoi is famous for its Bia Hoi. This literally means "fresh beer," and is a type of draught beer that is made daily. Each restaurant/establishment makes its own Bia Hoi every day and you buy it by mug or pitcher. One large mug of Bia Hoi will run you a heavy $ 0.25... The locals sit on tiny plastic chairs on the sidewalk outside the various Bia Hoi establishments and drink beer and watch the people/traffic passing by during the evenings. We found a packed Bia Hoi place and began ordering beer.


After a few pints Jonas and Pete led us in some Swedish drinking songs (Pete will soon surpass Jonas' Swedish language abilities... a true linguistic genius... a legend of our time... Pete didn't actually write that, I just want to give him some props since he has been taking some heat on the blog previously...) This caught the attention of some of the locals at the table behind us. This was a group of five Vietnamese men in the 50-60 range who were just enjoying an after-work Bia Hoi session. After a few joint cheers and toasts to Vietnam/Hanoi, we decided to buy them a round of beers. They were very excited and grateful for this, and toasted to us multiple times. Jonas then moved his chair to their table and used his growing Vietnamese vocabulary to make some small-talk. We all eventually moved to their table and had a few more beers. Around 8 pm the locals at our table began leaving. We were a bit worried about them driving their motorbikes home as they were obviously hammered, but our fears were eased by the memory of Pete's improvement as a driver after his shot of rice wine in Sapa... We stayed for a few more rounds before heading out on one of our biggest adventures yet...